News & Development Blog

Hi again! The last update was some time ago now, too long in fact! This is not a post to announce a new update, but to give some insight into what is going on.

Hit the jump for the full read.

After the last update we got a bunch of bug reports, and they are still coming in. The most troubling ones were related to random crashes and other equally bad stuff. We have gone through a series of fixes now on our side, but one of the bugs took longer than expected and have held us back from having a stable executable for a while. We have also received some feedback that a weekly or bi-weekly update tempo would be great, and we can only agree. We enjoy development in that tempo and we should be getting back to that after the coming update.

In the meantime we have been building the Adventure component of the game. This includes work on the editors as well as the content of it and the implementation of running it.

An example shop setup in the adventure editor

We are looking forward to see what people will be able to do with these editors!

As of this week things seem to be on track again and we are basically in release preparation mode trying to make sure that all the things that we have worked on since the last update gets packaged and presented in the best way possible. I’m currently sitting on a train, the weekend will largely be occupied by a wedding, and next week the Mojangstas and Kinten are away and I’m in Denmark. So as of right now, we cannot say a date, but I will be working today and the next week to make this happen as soon as possible.

Now this blog update gives me a reason to buy the game now. I honestly had doubts since the last game update was a long time a go and well the community seemed dead. I can’t wait for release! Will pre-purchase this weekend!

»Advanced controls: (sorry, I only have xbox 360 controller ideas, but that is all I play with. Ps THANK YOU for having controller support. I hate going through programs like xpadder.)

·Right now on the Xbox 360 controller the right joy stick isn’t doing anything. You should make it a manual aim. Often the auto aim is off if your target is jumping, so it would be nice to be able to manually aim. You could shoot while running backwards (maybe reduce the running speed while running backwards). So if you move it right, he aims toward the right side of the screen. If you move it right-up, he aims towards the right upper hand of the screen, and so forth.

·Right bumper throw grenade. This way you can quickly throw a grenade without having to change from you ranged group to your throwables.

»Cobalt app (if you would make this, please put it on the amazon app store)

»Ability to upload and download player made maps

»Story mod (I realize that this would be a large amount of work, would be difficult, and may not be worth the time. You may want to think about it though.)

»Player ability upgrades (again, another iffy one. It may not be the direction you want for the game, but again, it may turn out cool.)

»Easter eggs (this is more of a funny thing. Players love Easter eggs. It would be cool to have a minecraft or portal reference in here or there.

*ATM they’re working on more awesome stuff
*Not everyone has/wants a controller, so it’s not prioritary (in my opinion)
*Almost every hing you’ve listed there has been suggested before on this page/IRC/the forum/twitter.
*And almost every of all those things has been given an answer.

Also, read what they post first, please, because adventure mode is kind of a campaign/history mode…

Thank you for your input Janeator, but I still think that the items above would be cool. By the way, in my opinion the game is SOOO much more fun with a controller. But thank you for your thoughts on my ideas!

I can’t help but think that this was in response to my prior comment, so thanks for answering my question!

It’s lovely to hear you guys are dilligently hard at work (not that I thought you weren’t), but the fact that most of your attention is on bug fixing is great, considering collectively we found a heap! This is great, it’s been such a bummer not being able to play your amazing game. As always, I eagerly await the next update, as it always brings along woth it some amazing goodies and all sorts of new fun.

The bi-weekly update is a briliant idea in my opinion, as not only do we get to closely monitor the progress of a spectacular game, but that theoretically includes and induce increased feedback. Though, I can’t help but speculate thatwe are all going to get caught up in the work flow, and such a prospect seems unnecesarily speedy.
Though, you did say “try,” and I’m sure you wouldn’t push an update if it was severely flawed.

Now, gameplay predictory synopsis – everything looks great! The flying brain is an interesting idea, and it sounds like you’d give up the reaction enhancer for it, yes? A genius balancing idea. My only problem is slow-mo flying dodge is ohmygod on the awesome scale. The lighting in the video seems a little dull, while at the same time being slightly overpowering, but I’m blaming that on my monitor and a prototype level.

All in all, thanks for not forgetting us, thanks for all the amazing work, thanks forntruonf your best!

Keep up the good work!
-Fabio the Turtle

P.S. Did I ever mention how much I love the art style? It’s so pretty and quirky!

Just to specifically comment on manual aiming, that definitely won’t be added. The whole point of the roll aiming we do right now is to make aiming more skill based and more immersive. It’s not just an oversight that you can’t aim normally. Once you get used to it you can use roll aiming faster than you could move a potential reticule manually.

I don’t want to see manual aim, as roll-aim is more skillful. Also, the kind of movement you perform doesn’t really require analog controls, so i prefer my faster response through keyboard input at all times.

First off, I should mention that sometimes Cobalt decides it wants to work without crashing too much. You gotta kinda ease into it, make sure too much doesn’t happen right off the bat. Or so I’ve found, at least.

Anyway. I was playing on the Safest Gate, and I had pretty much done everything. I was facing the waves of bots, having a jolly good time… When an Air Bomb showed up. I was jumping around, trying to kill it whilst avoiding other things and generally killing them too. I guess I got too close to the air bomb, so it self destructed.
This happened. http://i.imgur.com/plPEU09.jpg

I would’ve gotten a more informative screenshot, but I was just in awe… I heard it explode or something, and a small error showed up on the bottom of the screen saying Cobalt couldn’t find a certain sound effect, I think. As I said, I would’ve gotten a screenshot, but here’s the kicker…

That big ball of light we can see? With the Air Bomb in the middle? It wouldn’t stop exploding. It lagged a bit, naturally, and I saw a big ball of repeatedly exploding flame clumsily making its way towards me. It ruined my shields, and I couldn’t kill it, so I was just trying to escape. Eventually the invulnerability of the shield wore off and I died. The Air Bomb just kept exploding and flying around, before it finally exploded for good a small while later, after another showed up, once again, I think it was for a sound effect.

Maybe it was set up so the explosion requires the sound effect and refuses to work without it? I could hear it explode, too, so I don’t know what sound effect was missing.